In Indonesia, Biologist Discovers
Second Population of Primitive Coelacanths

by Robert Sanders, Public
Affairs
posted October 7, 1998

A
primitive fish previously known only from a small area
around the Comoro Islands off the coast of Africa, has been
discovered at a new site 6,000 miles away in the waters off
northern Sulawesi, Indonesia.

The startling find by Berkeley postdoctoral fellow Mark
Erdmann comes nearly 60 years after a living coelacanth
(pronounced "SEE-la-kanth") was first discovered, surprising
paleontologists who had assumed the fish became extinct 65
million years ago. The 1938 find ignited a worldwide
fascination with the so-called "living fossil," and led to
numerous expeditions to capture a live coelacanth.

Since then more than 100 ceolacanths, now protected as an
endangered species, have been taken within a 100-mile
stretch of the Indian Ocean between Mozambique and
Madagascar. Aside from three strays captured not far away,
none have been found elsewhere.

Erdmann's discovery of a second population of ceolacanths
was reported in a brief letter in the Sept. 24, 1998, issue
of Nature, co-authored by Erdmann; Roy Caldwell, professor
and chair of integrative biology; and M. Kasim Moosa of the
Indonesian Institute of Sciences in Jakarta.

Indonesian President Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie announced
the find to the Indonesian people at a 1998 International
Year of the Ocean festival held in Manado, Sulawesi, Sept.
26.

The new population of Indonesian coelacanth seems
centered around the island of Manado Tua in North Sulawesi.
Because of its beautiful coral reefs the island is a popular
diving spot. The first coelacanth, with its distinctive
lobed fins, was sighted a year ago in a fish market in
Manado, on the Sulawesi mainland, by Erdmann and his wife
Arnaz Mehta, who had just celebrated their honeymoon. They
have lived for the past seven years in Indonesia, where
Erdmann studies the health of Indonesia's coral reefs. Mehta
is a nature guide.

Unable to purchase and transport the 50-pound fish,
Erdmann later returned to Manado in search of a second
coelacanth. This time he had financial support from the
National Geographic Society to interview Indonesian
fishermen and observe and photograph their fishing
practices.

On July 30, 1998, local fishermen caught another
coelacanth in the waters off Manado Tua and brought it to
Erdmann's home. Amazingly, for more than three hours Erdmann
was able to photograph the live fish swimming with local
people and with his wife before the fish died. He then froze
the coelacanth, which weighed 64 pounds and measured four
feet in length, and subsequently presented it to Indonesian
scientists for safe keeping.

"The biogeographic importance (of this find) is
enormous," Erdmann said. "It seems highly unlikely that this
fish only occurs in two highly disjunct populations -- the
Comoros and Sulawesi -- separated by more than 6,000 miles.
Rather, it is quite possible that the living coelacanth
exists in the vast intervening ocean area between Sulawesi
and the Comoros.

"Even if the Sulawesi population is the only other area
where the coelacanth is found, the fact that it could escape
detection from the scientific community in an area
well-studied by ichthyologists for over 100 years is
wonderful. It is a humbling and exciting reminder," he said,
"that humans have by no means conquered the oceans, and
provides fodder for our imagination about other,
as-yet-undiscovered 'sea monsters' and oddities from the
deep. And it underscores the importance of protecting our
oceans, lest we lose things forever which we have not yet
even discovered!"

"One of the basic questions we want to answer is, how
closely related are the Indonesian and African species?"
said Caldwell, who was Erdmann's doctoral advisor. "They
could be one megapopulation, or they could have been
separated for millions of years."

With the permission of the Indonesian government, Erdmann
and Caldwell hope to find another coelacanth from which to
obtain tissue samples to bring back to Berkeley for genetic
analysis to determine how recently the two populations were
in contact.

The primitive fish was once thought to be a direct
ancestor of humans, with biologists picturing the fish long
ago using its fleshy pectoral fins to walk out of the water.
Today it is known that the equally primitive lungfish is a
more direct human ancestor, while the coelacanth probably
was an evolutionary dead end.

Like the Comoran coelacanth, the Indonesian coelacanth
occurs in an area of active volcanic islands with many caves
and crevices at a depth of from 500 to 650 feet. Based on
what is known of the Comoran coelacanth, the Indonesian
coelacanths probably spend the day inside these caves and
come out at night to forage down to about 1,640 feet along
the gently sloping volcanic flanks of the islands.

Based on conversations Erdmann had with local fishermen,
the Indonesians do not eat coelacanths. However, when the
fish on rare occasions turn up in deep-sea nets set for
sharks and oilfish, local fishermen try to sell them to
unsuspecting marketgoers.

Erdmann and Caldwell suspect that few coelacanths are
caught in the area because most local fishermen set shallow
nets for tuna and more valuable fish. Only traditional
fishermen go to the trouble of setting the unwieldy gill
nets, which are around 500 feet long and 36 feet deep, in
search of deep sea fish.

The scientists are very concerned about the fate of the
new coelacanth population. In the 60 years since the Comoran
fish was discovered, the population of around 500 has
dwindled to perhaps fewer than 200, despite government
prohibitions on catching them and a ban on international
trade established by the Convention on International Trade
in Endangered Species (CITES).

With attention now drawn to the Indonesian coelacanth,
illegal fishing could threaten this population as well.

"While the CITES Appendix 1 status of this fish
theoretically provides it protection from international
trade, the fact is that none of the relevant authorities --
especially customs and fisheries inspection officers -- in
Indonesia even know of the existence of this fish," Erdmann
said. "The wheels have been set in motion to quickly educate
the relevant authorities, and I am confident that the
Indonesian government is taking coelacanth conservation
issues quite seriously. The Indonesian Institute of Sciences
is now preparing to direct further research efforts on
Indonesian coelacanths."

The Comoran coelacanth was discovered in 1938 by Marjorie
Courtenay Latimer, the curator of a tiny museum in the port
town of East London, northeast of Cape Town, South Africa.
At the time dubbed the "most important zoological find of
the century," it quickly became a holy grail for museums
around the world. Coelacanth skeletons litter the fossil
record starting about 410 million years ago, but after the
fish's heyday some 250 million years ago, its fossils slowly
dwindle. The presumption was that the fish died out.

"They appeared to go extinct with the dinosaurs at the
end of the Cretaceous period, because no fossils have been
found after 65 million years ago," Caldwell said.

Despite numerous expeditions to find a second coelacanth,
it wasn't until 1952 that another was caught in the Comoros.
Since then, most have been caught among these islands, and
it is thought that the original fish from the Indian Ocean
was a stray from the Comoran population. No one has been
able to keep a coelacanth alive in captivity.

Before the discovery of the coelacanth, Erdmann had been
studying stomatopods or mantis shrimp as possible
bioindicators, attempting to use ecological information
about stomatopods to influence protection of coral reefs
from marine pollution.

"The coelacanth has an equally fascinating natural
history, and because of its widespread appeal, has great
potential as a keystone species to influence marine
conservation development in Indonesia," he said. "As such, I
look forward to continuing both research avenues, with the
ultimate aim of securing the future of Indonesia's reefs,
the most magnificent and highly threatened in the world."

Support for this work came from the National Geographic
Society and a National Science Foundation International
Postdoctoral Fellowship with the Indonesian Institute of
Sciences.